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The Brandon Miller Incident and the Devastating Consequences of a Poverty-Driven Gun Culture [1]
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Date: 2023-03-01
Alabama University basketball star Brandon Miller (center).
In case you don’t follow sports and haven’t heard about the incident, Alabama University basketball star Brandon Miller was riding in his car back on January 15th with another teammate when another companion in the car grabbed/was given a gun by this teammate and started shooting, killing a young mother in another car. Miller so far has not been charged with a crime, although his teammate and the shooter have both been charged with murder.
Drive by shooting, East LA. Credit photojournalist Joseph Rodriguez
I’m not going to dwell on the tragic details of the event itself, if you’re interested in more details they can easily be found via your search engine. Suffice it to say, to the powers that be, it’s just another youth gun killing which is especially epidemic in poorest of many African American communities across the land.
We may hear about the next school shooting and the more dramatic or deadly ones, but the type of shooting that took place at Alabama University was only publicized because of its location at a major university and involved a potential future NBA super star.
Most like these go unreported or buried on page 6. No politician likes admitting that they have lost control over public safety in the affected communities to armed young people, often in gangs. They don’t usually make national news like the Miller incident.
The Historical Result of Systemic Racism
If you want an unintended education on some of these tragic murders and have a strong stomach, watch The First 48, a cable documentary/drama about real life homicide cases. See the suffering that goes on in these communities in various American cities across the country firsthand. The show maybe criticized for a number of troubling reasons, but one can’t argue that this side of America does not exist. And one more likely to be exploited by white supremacists than addressed by the political classes or even by many progressives among us.
I feel it’s important to state for the record that the racist ramblings of white supremacists do not alter the fact that it is the long-term historical conditions of chronic poverty and racism that have played the primary role in the development of this gang scourge that has periodically hit America.
Like the 1950s but . . .
Joker Turf in 1959. Photographer Bruce Davidson
We saw something similar in both black and white communities in the 1950s, when conditions were also ripe for violent gangs’ development. My own brother being a widely known leader of one gang. Drugs were then first being introduced to poor communities and combined with rampant family economic instability and in many black areas generational poverty conditions to give birth to dozens if not hundreds of violent street gangs. Like white gangs known as South Brooklyn, the Jokers, and the Tigers and black or Latino gangs like the Chaplins (which had numerous chapters), Mau Maus (aLatin gang) and the Crucifiers. They tended to dominate the landscape in the most economically depressed, abandoned and red-lined communities.
Roots of the Gang/Gun Culture
Gun culture dominates young people in many poorer communities.
The big difference today is the wide availability of handguns, which are everywhere now but were rarely available in the 50s. Combined with inferior schooling, generational poverty, street drugs, unemployment and familial instability and you get a particularly destructive and sometimes deadly street culture than forms street gangs.
The streets in depressed communities have harsh and sometimes deadly “rules” unique to them. Deadly rivalries often develop along with violent competition for turf and territories upon which to deal illicit drugs, a major element in the economies of these depressed areas. Guns began becoming more widely available as early as the 1970s, if not earlier. White gangs in general declined in most cities after the 50s as the nation started to experience an economic boom, which as you’d expect was of more limited benefit to people of color, and the gang problem persisted in many of their communities right up to the present times.
Abandoned by America
Mass incarceration, Americas poverty program.
These communities were long ago abandoned to their fate by the political classes as well as the nation itself. The result is that millions of African Americans and people of color disproportionally have to live under these terror conditions at the hands, not by groups like Al-Qaeda, but their own children.
No One’s Kids are Safe at any Age
Even more stable families in these communities can see their children devoured by a death culture which has emerged and are subject to being killed over a gang/drug dealing turf issue, a minor verbal spat, doing something perceived by someone else as being disrespectful, or for seemingly no reason whatsoever!
Losing One's Humanity
How is this possible? Innocent youth can be easily swallowed up and dehumanized by this culture when family support structures and entire communities disintegrate over time and drugs are introduced. Drugs that cause a level of violence and addiction even in more stable communities, but they are massively deadly and destructive in unstable ones.
Gang culture precedes adult maturity by 10 years on average.
Credit photojournalist Joseph Rodriguez.
Beyond even the devastation that chronic generational poverty brings, systemic racism has drained youth self-confidence and belief in their own self-worth and humanity, both in their own eyes and in the eyes of the rest of America. Gun possession is the substitute “narcotic” that attracts many a youth who feels that gun possession brings with it self-respect and manhood. Also, counter to Republican “logic”, carrying handguns promote their arbitrary use, especially in the minds of immature young adults and children, in any sort of conflict, when you fear that the other guy has one and may shoot you first.
This is reflected in many of the youth, who when talked to relate that they fully expect early death or imprisonment as their ultimate fate. America decided some time ago that the response to these desperate conditions would be mass incarceration and the massive multi-trillion-dollar national campaign of gentrification and urban renewal would displace and not include many black and poor white Americans.
Consequences of Centuries of Racism
There are an estimated 400 million guns in America.
Homicide deaths for blacks in 2020 were more than twice the number of whites, despite blacks being only about 13% of the country. They would, minus systemic racism, be expected to account for13% of homicides, but instead account for a shocking 60%. Doing the math accounts for about 7,500 extra homicides per year! Mostly black youth including women and children.
I consider it a national disgrace that the plight of communities so fragmented and unstable that they are being terrorized by their own youth via an armed gun culture is largely being ignored by the nation. Homicide is the leading cause of death for blacks under 30. Death from encounters with police is the 6th leading cause of death for blacks under 30.
Silence on these Crisis Conditions = Death, Literally
Credit photojournalist Joseph Rodriguez
It can be expected that white supremacists and many Republicans will point to these statistics to “prove” the inferiority of blacks. We here of course know better. But who, other than them, are responsible for doing so very little over the years approaching the commitment needed to reduce these scandalous figures? The systemic reasons for these racial and economic conditions have previously been mentioned and have long been known. Conditions today have reached critical mass in many communities.
Policing: not an Instrument for Addressing Poverty, the Root Cause of most Crime
Rev. Barber and Pete Buttigieg meet when Mayor of South Bend, IND.
Even in so-called liberal Democratic New York, we now have a law-and-order former policeman Mayor, Eric Adams. Under pressure with a 70% increase in murders, Adams is someone who is voluntarily under the thumb of real estate interests and sees only police and mass incarceration strategies as solutions to the twin problems of mass poverty and crime.
Those working to address the generational poverty which lead to these conditions like Rev. William Barber are barely written about, follow-ed or reported on. Barber has worked closely with progressive Democratic forces on a number of successful political campaigns. So have many other community leaders throughout the country.
We rarely hear about this aspect of the massive gun problem in America and how it now daily terrorizes the poor. It’s long past time to integrate it into discussions about poverty, guns and crime.
Poverty: A Man-Made Condition
A direct result of Wall Street Market Driven Capitalism
I’m well aware of why poverty has been buried and largely absent for almost everyone’s political agenda. It is not profitable to invest political capital in eliminating poverty given how long the problem has gone virtually without mention. A commitment equal to the task of resolving the problem would cost many trillions and would be mercilessly attacked by the right, especially around election time.
It would also raise a troubling but important issue. Who and what is really responsible for poverty conditions and why has it never been close to vanishing from the national scene.
I’m not suggesting it’s easy to raise the issue to politicians and get a real response as opposed to all the usual excuses for why their hands are tied. They know, but will never admit, that poverty is the flip side of the accumulation of unlimited wealth triggered by the indifferent engines of our market/profit-based capitalist system.
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